They control everything from access to space to the flow of news on Earth, and now outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden has warned that a new wave of Donald Trump-aligned oligarchs could pose a serious threat to the very foundation of U.S. democracy.
But what exactly is an “oligarchy”? In short, an oligarchy is an elite few who control the government’s actions.
By using the pointedly negative term “oligarchy,” Biden equated this moment – when the world’s wealthiest men are feting the U.S.’ incoming president – with some of history’s more brutal regimes.
Biden used his farewell speech to the nation to deliver a shockingly dark message: that a nation that has always revered its entrepreneurs may now be at their mercy.
“An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms,” Biden said.
He named no names, but his targets were clear: Men like Elon Musk – the world’s richest person – surround incoming Republican President Trump.
That “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people” will have “dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked,” he said.

And echoing President Dwight Eisenhower’s own farewell warning in 1961 about the dangers of an out-of-control military-industrial complex, Biden flagged the “potential rise of a tech industrial complex” – referring to the Silicon Valley titans behind transformational advances in AI and robots.
Biden’s pulling of the alarm cord as he goes out the door can be chalked up to politics. But there’s no disputing the fact that America’s uber-wealthy and fantastically ambitious tycoons are swarming around Trump.
A place on the dais
On Inauguration Day on Monday, several of the biggest will sit feet away from Trump on the presidential dais.
Chief among them is Musk, whose wealth is estimated by Forbes to be $435 billion, and who has been named to a high-profile position in charge of cutting government spending.
After helping to bankroll the campaign against Kamala Harris, Musk has become a fixture in the inner circle, appearing at more public dinners and other events with Trump than the president-elect’s wife, Melania Trump.
As owner of SpaceX, Musk is already one of the biggest U.S. government contractors, and as owner of Tesla, he’s at the forefront of the U.S. push to win the e-vehicle race. As owner of social media site X, he has turned the platform into a bullhorn for voices that favor Trump.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg – second and third on Forbes’ global rich list – will also be on the dais.
Bezos, vying to rival Musk in the space contracting business, loudly signaled his decision to cozy up to Trump just before the election when he killed an endorsement by his newspaper, The Washington Post, of Harris.
Amazon Prime Video, which was founded by Bezos, got exclusive licensing rights to stream the inauguration and theatrically release first lady Melania Trump’s new documentary.
Zuckerberg, who once banned Trump from Facebook because of his role in attempts to overthrow the 2020 election, recently dined with Trump and is reportedly hosting a reception for Republican billionaires at the inauguration – which he has also helped fund to the tune of $1 million.
Amazon and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last month also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. And Musk’s super PAC spent around $200 million to help elect Trump.

More consequentially: Zuckerberg last week announced that Facebook and Instagram would get rid of an army of fact-checkers in the United States – long demonized as liberal censorship by Trump and his allies.
According to U.S. media, Shou Zi Chew, the head of another controversial and massively influential platform – Chinese-owned TikTok – has also been invited to the inauguration.
Oligarchy U.S.-style
The presence of the super-rich in politics is neither new nor confined to the United States.
In Russia, oligarchs in the wild 1990s first bought up the economy, then the government, before being forced into a more regulated partnership with the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin.
Business figures have also entered deep into politics in countries as varied as India and communist China.
But Lorenzo Castellania, a history professor at Rome’s Luiss University, says the U.S. has distinct oligarchical traditions.
“I don’t think it is fair to compare Musk to the oligarchs of authoritarian regimes. I think instead he fits into a very American historical typology such as the robber barons who appeared on the political scene in the late 19th and early 20th century,” Castellania said.
Although the likes of Andrew Carnegie and JPMorgan wielded enormous influence over U.S. democracy, they also created untold wealth for the economy, leaving legacies ranging from soaring public buildings to entire industries.
But the Gilded Age was almost a century and a half ago. How will it work this time?
Castellania says the seemingly ironbound Trump-Musk partnership may contain two fatal flaws.
First, “both have a huge ego” and “the chances of friction being generated in the long run are high.”
Secondly, something deeper: Trump’s electoral base wants less immigration and more isolationism, while Musk and the “tech industrial complex” have global – even inter-planetary – visions.
“One of the most interesting questions of this new administration,” Castellania said, “will be to see whether or not this coexistence will endure.”
Biden made a complicated assertion as both Republicans and Democrats have relied on Silicon Valley fortunes to boost their political ambitions.
Like many words in politics, oligarchy originates from Ancient Greek and quite literally means that few command. But unlike an aristocracy, an oligarchy is more closely tied to wealth than nobility and family lineage.
The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his book “Politics” that “democracy is safer and more free from civil strife than oligarchy; for in oligarchies two kinds of strife spring up, faction between different members of the oligarchy and also faction between the oligarchs and the people.”
Multiple countries have been labeled oligarchies by academics.
After the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, former state assets and other institutions came under the control of increasingly wealthy businessmen who became known as billionaire oligarchs.
The mix of profits and politics that began under then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin gave way to crackdowns by Putin, who has his own favored oligarchs and pledged to let them keep their fortunes so long as they are loyal to him.
With its legacy of colonialism and powerful families, the Philippines has been accused of being an oligarchy, with its former President Rodrigo Duterte claiming to have dismantled the system. Critics said he simply gave preferences to a different set of oligarchs.
Apartheid-era South Africa was also seen by some academics as having a white racial oligarchy.
Even before Biden’s speech, the rising wealth gap in the United States – as well as in China – raised concerns about whether the world’s two largest economies were becoming oligarchies.
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